The Characters that bring LARP alive

Is LARP a type of game or an art form?

The experience of LARPing is very personal, with each person having a different litany of experiences and taking different things away from any given game and away from LARPing as a whole. For the second piece of the NELCO 2013 series, I wanted to address a question that has been floating around in the theater LARP community for a while: Is LARP a type of game or an art form?

Out of Character went to NELCO – a theater-style LARP (Live Action RolePlaying) conference run by NEIL, the folks behind Intercon. We asked LARPers and LARP creators if they thought of LARP as a game or a form of art, and what they though of the community wide discussion on the topic. This video captures some of the themes that emerged in their answers.

18 thoughts on “Is LARP a type of game or an art form?”

Seems like a lot of this discussion takes place around the definition of art and the definition of game. After thinking about this for a while, I have decided what I want to do is reach out to some artists and ask them to think about how they define art, and how that might intersect with LARPing.

Good LARP is always entertainment. Often it is also artisanship, both on the part of the designers and the players. In 25 years, I have been privileged to be in games that moved with the grace of ballet, games that brought new perspective and ideas, and games that were uproarious bursts of childlike action. Mostly, the art is in the concept and preparation, though occasionally that includes preparation done by the players as well as the writers and GMs. I find that the best often fit an old definition of entertainment: “Make them laugh, make them cry, scare the crap out of them, and go home.” There can be bad art (writers / GMs who have a rigid expectation with no contingency plans) and there can be bad games (4 hour game, so heavy on specialized mechanics that it takes 3 hours to get the rules straight). I may be biased, though, since I have come to view LARP as a very real acting career that’s gone two and a half decades.

One thing that seems universally true of LARPers is we really like to TALK a lot. Listening to individual interviews thematically grouped together is really nice, and nobody’s getting shouted over. It’s so … civilized. 🙂

Once, somewhere, I read a definition of art that went something like: “Art is not in the work of the painter. Art is not in the person who views the work. Art is the moment shared between the two.” There has been some really brilliant artful LARPs. I’d like to think I’ve created a few moments.

Thinking about LARP in the context of that quote is interesting because the “viewer” is collaborating in the “painting”. The complexity of simultaneous nature in some LARP and the collapse of the viewer/artist divide can lead to a lot of shared moments.

Tony – Realizing that we might be stumbling into a different debate – Craft vs art, I think you and Jeff are making an interesting distinction that is worth exploring. Would you say Craft is the interaction between the creator and the manipulated inanimate, while Art happens when (if) the crafted object triggers an experience? (I am trying to try in the Roy Ascott quote above).

My personal definition of art is very generous: anything that was created with the intent of eliciting an emotional response from the viewer can be art to me. By that definition there are definitely LARPs that are art. There is also an argument that the players who are taking part in a game can make a game into art even if it’s original designer wasn’t trying to create art. I think that’s less common, but certainly a thing that happens.